


trope meme ficlet #2

by la_dissonance



Series: commentfics and drabbles [1]
Category: Bandom, Empires
Genre: Babies, Gen, Schmoop, Supernatural Elements, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 20:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_dissonance/pseuds/la_dissonance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max is telepathic and there is accidentally a baby</p>
            </blockquote>





	trope meme ficlet #2

**Author's Note:**

> for a prompt from TheWrongKindOfPC :)

"She says she doesn't like that one, either," Max says.

Tom sighs. "What kind of baby doesn't have a name after three days?"

"Five," Julio corrects, poking Tom with his foot. Impressive, considering Tom's sitting in the front seat of the van and Julio's lying on the floor behind him, but Julio has long legs.

Tom waves his hand. "The point is, we're horrible parents and she should have a name already."

"Chelsea?" Sean suggests. They had started out with a list, on the first day, but as every name had been rejected by either a band member or the baby herself, they'd gradually started just calling out names at random. It's a good way to pass time stuck in traffic or the wait between load-in and a show, like now.

Max confers with the baby in his lap and shakes his head. "If it helps at all, she seems to be happier about the ones that have a 'th' in them."

"Elizabeth? Aw come on, it's a classic," Sean says when Max shakes his head again.

"She says it reminds her of sneezing."

Tom laughs. "Fuck, I'm never going to be able to un-hear that."

"Thelma?" Mike asks, and everyone rolls their eyes. Mike has mostly been disqualified from coming up with baby names. "Ethel? Bertha?"

Max isn't sure whether Mike has terrible taste in baby names or if he's just trolling them all — probably the latter — but the baby isn't excited about any of his suggestions, so it doesn't matter.

"Martha," Tom says, closely followed by Julio's "Katherine."

All of the mind-talk is starting to hurt Max's head, but he wants the baby to have a name as much as the rest of them. It'll make her feel more real, more _theirs_. Without a name it's like she only exists when they're looking right at her, blink and she might be gone.

"Maybe she already has a name," Max says. "It could be something we've never heard of."

"Why don't you just ask her what it is?" Sean asks. He's sitting in the driver's seat and keeps playing peek-a-boo with the baby from behind it, which makes it even harder to try and talk to her.

"Babies this small don't have words yet," Max says. "She couldn't tell me even if she knew what it was. The stuff I get from her is all pictures and shapes and feelings."

"Huh," Sean says from behind the headrest, then pops his head up and bugs his eyes out at the baby, who squeals in delight. 

Julio says, "Too bad. You could've asked her where she comes from."

"I should stop or else I'll have to play through a headache tonight. Maybe tomorrow," Max says. It's something they've all been wondering, something Max has been turning over in his head ever since they found out she could hear them. How could he mentally phrase that question so that the baby understand it? Would they want to know the answer?

Julio had found the baby, though it had been two days after that that they'd taken her in. It doesn't take special mind-powers to tell that Julio feels guilty as hell over it, though it's no fault of his own, and the baby's safe and sound, anyway.

"I saw this carrier after the show in Baltimore, in an alley," Julio had said that first night, the one they'd all spent huddled around the baby's carrier, watching her sleep. "Remember when we went out to smoke, Max? It was right there, I should have gone over and checked..."

But Max doesn't remember noticing anything unusual. Their show in Baltimore had been in a pretty sketchy neighborhood; pretty much nothing he could've seen in an alley would've surprised him. Certainly not an empty baby carrier.

The second time it turned up it was harder to ignore — right outside the front door of a motel when they were checking out. 

"Did someone seriously leave a baby in the flowerbed?" Tom had remarked, shaking his head. 

Max had looked over and shook his head, but none of them had really thought much of it at the time. They were running late because the shower in Mike and Sean's room had broken, and besides, it was a tiny town and a quiet street and how far away could the parents possibly be?

The third time, though, had been impossible to brush off. It was a Walmart parking-lot night, since the previous night had been a motel night, and they were still in the middle of nowhere, so the parking lot was completely deserted except for their van.

Sean had nearly tripped over the carrier when he went out to pee in the bushes. "Guys? Guys! You need to come see this."

He'd sounded panicked enough that they'd all come tumbling out of the van and trooped over to the shrubbery at the edge of the lot to gather around the baby carrier and peer inside.

Max squeezed in next to Tom's shoulder and cocked his head to the side. Something looked familiar. "Is this the same baby from this morning?"

"Can't tell," Tom said. 

They ended up calling the police in the end, because there was no one parked anywhere nearby to ask. They sat around and rocked her carrier and baby-talked at her while they waited for the cops to show up, and Sean sang her snatches of Raffi songs that made them all laugh because of the way he botched the lyrics, and made the baby laugh because the rest of them were laughing. When the cop car showed up, it was a little bit hard to let her go.

It would have been just another improbable tour story — the time the tires melted off their van, the time a car exploded in front of them on the highway, the time they found a baby abandoned in a Wal-Mart parking lot — except that the next night, when Max goes back to the van in the middle of the gig to look for a pack of guitar strings to lend to the headliners, the baby is there. He drops the trailer key on the ground and has to crouch down to find it in the dark, but when he stands up, the baby is still there in the trailer. Which had been locked since load-in. 

It's unmistakably the same baby, but he calls Julio to come out and confirm, not wanting to take his eyes off her unless she — disappears. Or starts crying. 

"We should have taken her in the first time," Julio says, then tells Max about the baby carrier in the alley in Baltimore.

She's starting to get fussy with them both standing there staring at her. "Do you think we should call the cops again?" Max asks. He's trying not to broadcast his apprehension, which is about the first bit of mind-talker etiquette Danielle taught him when they were kids, after 'don't eavesdrop'. 

Julio sits down in the edge of the trailer and gently lifts the baby out of the carrier. "We could try, but I think she'd just come back. Shh, shh, it's okay," he says to the baby.

Max sits down next to Julio and leans into his shoulder. "You're probably right."

Cradled against Julio's chest, the baby's still fussing, though a bit quieter now. Max gives her his finger to grab and coos at her. _You're safe now, we'll take care of you,_ he thinks at her, and to his surprise she quiets immediately and looks straight at him. 

"Holy cow," he says out loud, for Julio's benefit. "I think she can hear me."

"Like —" Julio makes a gesture near his temple that's supposed to indicate telepathy and Max nods. 

"I told her we'll take care of her, too, so I think that means we have to."

Julio nods seriously and pats the baby's back. "We'll need to stop for diapers, and another change of clothes, and baby food — do you figure she eats food yet, or just milk?"

Max doesn't have much firsthand experience with babies, none of them do, but the fact that he can just ask when there's something they're not sure about goes a long way to convince him they can actually take this on. He formulates a question that translates roughly to _after you get hungry, then what?_ — questions are harder without words — and gets back a wave of happysleepy and a confusing jumble of images.

"Just milk, I think," he says, taking a second to sort them out.

"We should get one of those books that tells you when they're supposed to be old enough for what so we don't fuck anything up," Julio says. 

"Do you think this means we can't swear anymore?"

"You tell me...did she hear that one?"

"I don't think she was listening," Max says. He tunes in, just enough to say hi and see how she's doing. She's getting sleepy again, and all she's listening to is the sound of Julio's heart.

Tom and Sean find them still sitting in the back of the trailer half an hour later, when the show ends and they start loading out.

"Look who we found," Max says.


End file.
